Thesophism in Tyrant Banderas by Valle Inclan, El Pasajero, nº 33, 2025

(Inspired by the 2021 English translation of Tirano Banderas by Peter Bush, published with Morimura's photo of Goya’s horrendous but very relevant painting of Saturn devouring his son on the cover, I have done an updated version and an English translation of my article «Theosophism in Tirano Banderas» first published, in Journal of Spanish Studies: Twentieth Century (Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 1974) and a Spanish translation in El Pasajero. Revista de estudios sobre Ramón del Valle-Inclán, nº 3, 2000.)

Dedicated to the memory of our dear friend and fellow valleinclanista, Javier Serrano Alonso

According to The marvelous lamp, aesthetic creation is the «miracle of allusion and allegory» in which only the eyes of poets «discover the luminous links of a hidden harmony». [ed. Austral: 109-111].

If we are to glimpse the harmony of Tyrant Banderas that, in addition to being occult, is occultist, we will have to find a key. Although I am not a poet, I believe the key to Tyrant Banderas is found in the words of the enlightened apostle, Roque Cepeda, who, with the Indian, Zacarías, escapes the devastating effects of the dehumanizing techniques that degrade the other characters.

We see Cepeda for the first time in cell number 3 in the third part of the Santa Mónica section of the novel. He preaches ideas which are very similar to those of theosophic philosophy, although Guénon (Theosophism) considers his philosophy more theosophist than strictly theosophical. Although he is now almost 50, Cepeda says he will still take part in the revolution even though he dies in the process. Roque's face bears the smile of the seraphim who in the Kabbalistic hierarchy can see the afterlife. His example instills stoic serenity in the other prisoners, while in his cell triangular light plays with the triangle of shadow [ed. Zamora Vicente: 117].

According to the concept of theosophy, man is an angel banished from heaven for a sin that he has to purge by pilgrimage along the paths of time, his soul imprisoned in a body of vile mud. Fate, governed by celestial powers, condemns the soul to a cycle of successive lives and deaths, always chained to time. But there is a way to break this circular chain. By accepting his moral responsibility, man gains the privilege of passing under the arches of ultimate death, freeing himself from his body and returning to paradise to rejoin the Great All. According to don Roque, revolution that liberates the Indian provides man with a way to assume his moral responsibility and thus redeem himself from the infernal circle of time.

As don Roque says «In our concept, the basic founding principle is the redemption of the Indian.» [Zamora Vicente: 264].

Roque Cepeda 's sermon is based on a concept, similar to that of The marvelous lamp of Neopythagorean origin, common to the Gnostics, Kabbalists and Hermetic magicians. The sublunary world and the soul, in unity with the divine principle heads towards multiplicity, and then returns to the starting point. Cepeda says that the redemption of the Indian is the keystone of his philosophy [Zamora Vicente: 264].

Roque's face bears the smile of the seraphim who in the Kabbalistic hierarchy can see the afterlife. His example instills stoic serenity in the other prisoners, while in his cell triangular light plays with the triangle of shadow [Zamora Vicente: 117].

The rupture of unity is explained by original sin, which causes the fall of man from the eternal world of light to the temporal world of darkness. The opposition of the two forces, God and Satan, light and darkness, eternity and time, produces the antagonism that sustains the cosmos. This theory is illustrated in La lámpara maravillosa by the circle.

The symbolism of the mythical temple of Solomon, whose columns in tension, shows how the world turns in a circular way like the alchemical symbol of the Ouroboros snake which bites its own tail. The two columns, plus their arch, correspond to the powers of the divine triad, whose geometric symbol, the triangle, with the vertex upwards, when placed over the triangle of the satanic triad, with the vertex downwards form the seal of Solomon.

The magic number of this figure is computed by adding the number of points of the triangles with the central point. The sum is the number seven. A line drawn through the points of the triangles produces the shape of the snake: the circle. The seal of Solomon surrounded by the circle of Ouroboros forms the emblem of the Theosophical Society, which was one of the organizations which spread theosophical ideas in the times of Valle-Inclán. (See the seal on wikipedia Theosophical Society).

Roque Cepeda's description of the human condition provides the key to the close unity of the novel's structural and figurative elements. These are elaborated on the same figure on which Don Roque's sermon is based: that of the circle. Valle Inclán's work is circular since the prologue describes what happens at the end of the work.

Roque's face bears the smile of the seraphim who in the Kabbalistic hierarchy can see the afterlife. His example instills stoic serenity in the other prisoners, while in his cell the three-sided figure of triangular light plays with the triangle of shadow. The analogy between the spheres is repeated in the description of Santa Mónica: the fort-prison is surrounded in the sea by circles of corpses and sharks, and in the sky, by circles of buzzards that project their triangular shadow onto the paving of the patio.

The circle, as we have seen, has its corresponding numbers: three and seven. These govern the divisions of the book. Three parts, made up of three books each precede and follow the central fourth part, which consists of seven books. The set is framed by a prologue and epilogue. There are, in all, twenty-seven divisions or a trinity of trinities. The reasons that support Roque's thesis are indicated by the magic numbers.

For more on circularity and related concepts, see the University of Santiago's version of my doctoral thesis El centro del círculo: la lámpara maravillosa de Valle-Inclán. published as the first of the series of monographs of the Cátedra Valle-Inclán headed by leading valleinclanista Margarita Santos Zas. University de Santiago de Compostela: 2007. See especially my drawing on p.181.

The precariousness of human life intensifies under tyranny. This is manifested by the figure of the Indian subjected to torture, by order of the Tyrant, the same afternoon that the Day of the Dead fair begins in the town. The Indian is buried up to the waist in three feet of earth and under three, seven and nine lashes he arches over himself, thus tracing the symbolic circle of the condition of man under tyranny. He is neither living nor dead, but suffering horrible abuse. In the epilogue this man is freed by death after having remained in the same position for three days [Zamora Vicente: 36-37].

In an interview of Valle with Gregorio Martinez the 7th of December of 1928 that Zamora Vicente includes in his introduction to the novel, (15) Valle explains his use of the magical number three in his novel: He organized his work around the three races of the new world, that he sees as the native Indian, the immigrant, and the creole. He portrays the Indian in three figures: Generalito Banderas, Zacarías el Cruzado and the Indian being tortured at the beginning of the fair. The criollo three are the eloquent Sánchez Ocaña, the fighter Filomeno Sánchez, and the criollo charged with religious sense with resonance of Asís, that is don Roque Cepeda. The three immigrants are the Minister of Spain, the rich man don Celes, and the pawnshop owner, don Peredita.

For more on magic numbers and theosophical ideas, see my «El concepto de karma» to read about Valle's relationship with the famous Madrid theosophist, don Mario Roso de Luna.

The three days at the beginning of the novel trace the course of Banderas on the wheel of fortune. When we first see him, he is at the top, fresh from his triumph in Zamalpoa, (where, as he later complains he was forced to stay awake for three nights) but the insistence on the twilight of autumn predicts his coming descent. That light reflected on the round domes of the barracks highlights their circular shape and points to the circularity of time which has made Santa Mónica, at times a convent at others a barracks.

That is to say that the regime of Tirano Banderas is only one of many in history.

In the prologue of the novel, we see the forces preparing to deliver the death blow to the tyrant's regime. The revolutionaries in the circle of the lantern seem to be lights in the tyrannical night, but their plans of operation are as brutal as those of Banderas himself. That is, the revolution will rotate in the same closed circle.

But didn't Roque Cepeda declare that revolution is the way to escape from this circle? How can it be so strongly linked to the same circle? The answer is suggested by three songs throughout the novel.

The first one we will comment on is sung by a blind man said to be at the foot of some nopal cactuses. Valle probably refers to the saguaro cactus whose great height and giant arms would allow a man to stand under it. On the contrary, the nopal cactus which grows close to the ground would not allow a man to stand under it. While it does not produce arms, the nopal does produce large roundish fronds which, had he wanted to, Valle could have used as another example of circularity in his novel. Valle probably saw both the saguaro and the nopal cactus on his trips to Mexico. For much more on Valle in Mexico, see Schneider's Todo México en Valle-Inclán.

The image of the blind guitarist under the huge arms of the saguaro prefigures the torch of freedom of the Indian who is to come with the New Jerusalem in the hands of the revolution.

But the scars left by small pox on the face of the blind man who sings suggest a spiritual illness that blinds man to his obligations, just as happens to the bandit, Diego Pedernales. According to Zamora Vicente's glossary [242], Pedernales could be a reference to Diego Pernales (1880-1907), a famous Spanish delinquent often quoted in folk songs and popular sayings.

In the novel, Pedernales is the man who does not accept his responsibility. And, because of that, he loses his divine inheritance and so, revolution cannot lead to the New Jerusalem, but will continue to revolve in the same circle.

The song is associated above all with the Colonel de La Gándara, who adds another stanza to it telling how Pedernales was imprisoned for betraying a woman

This seems to be a warning of his own fate because at that moment Banderas’s men are coming to arrest him for betraying the prostitute Lupita by breaking her glasses and for not paying for his drinks. It is the sin that caused the first fall of man and the one that makes the black forces preside in the figure of Tirano Banderas while the white saint, Roque Cepeda, is in prision.

In the courtyard of Tirano Banderas, bats disturb the whiteness of the wall with their black triangles, mimicking the struggle between the two powers [Zamora Vicente:44].

Although the black tyrant tries to paint his mask white, he does not fool the dove of golden light, Cepeda, who calls him what he is: «Mr. General, forgive my frankness. Listening to you, I seem to hear the Serpent of Genesis» [Zamora Vicente: 182].

Banderas keeps himself aloof from his world by a mask of indifference, made even more hermetic by coca which trickles out of the corners of his mouth in ugly green spittle and causes him to constantly call attention to his chewing with the words of «chac chac». In Bush's translation these words are «chop chop». The color green is often connected with Banderas and suggests his association with the devil.

Banderas relegates the execution of sentences to his subordinates, while he contemplates with his telescope of triple bodies the only powers that open a comma in his indifference: the stars. The «cocuyos» (fireflies) imitate the stars with their little lights. This demonstrates the law of analogy between the micro and the macrocosm, according to which man, if he knows how to read the numbers of the stars, can foresee the future. That is why Banderas dedicates himself to the study of the stars with his telescope and looks for a comet that will announce the coming uprisings against his regime.

The second song we will examine is made up of 3 verses sung by Solita the daughter of the blind pianist, Velones in the Green Room [Zamora Vicente: 83] devoted to questionable expressions of love along with dedication to the saints who oversee the Day of the Dead.

Another character, Dr. Polish, professes, like Roque Cepeda, to have the mission of disseminating theosophical Doctrines, but he makes it easier for people to transcend the circle outside of time, not by revolution but by means of hypnotic or magnetic sleep. His hypnotism supposedly causes the dream that he induces in Lupita, la Romántica, a dream which gives her the power to foresee de la Gándara's fate and warn him. But this ability is not due to Polish's magic, who admits that Lupita cannot see the future. She can only see the present.

Polish turns out to be a charlatan (his hair is a wig), but Lupita is affected by his gaze. As she falls unconscious, Lupita’s hair unravels into a black cobra, which alludes to the serpent of circular time [Zamora Vicente: 86]. Lupita sees what anyone with the intuition of life and revolution would see. As both follow the endless circle, it is not necessary to see more than the present: the infinite present of men who do not accept their moral responsibility.

In my article «Más sobre Das» I show how the character of Doctor Polish could have been inspired by the famous hypnotist Conde Das, who was invited to give a demonstration of hypnotism for the royal family in 1888 and shortly thereafter arrested for fraud which would be his pattern during the 15 years he spent touring in South America.

Lupita, la Romántica, forms a parallel with the other Lupita, the prostitute. The prostitute begins the chain of events by betraying de la Gándara, and the Romantic complicates the action by notifying him. Both are called serpents: one, wise, the other, biomagnetic, relating the one with the serpent in Eden and the other, with Ouroboros.

All the other characters in the novel are placed either in the sphere of Roque Cepeda or in that of Tirano Banderas. We identify the latter by their participation in the three sins contrary to the divine triad: World. Flesh and Demon.

The World or greed is the real reason why Lupita, the prostitute, betrays de la Gándara and, the central part of the novel tells the story of Zacarías and Quintín, the pawnbroker, who is greed personified.

Flesh or sterile lust is represented by the male lovers whom Valle-Inclán calls Isabelita and Currito Mi-Alma; In Bush's translation they are «Currito my Sweetie» and his lover is don Celes.

The Devil or selfishness is most evident in de la Gándara since it is he who drags the other characters, including Zacarías, into the circle of his destiny. Despite adverse omens, Zacarías does not hesitate to help de la Gándara. De la Gándara's ring is going to be sacrificed to make this happen.

Given that the ring reiterates the theosophical concept of the circles of time, it is important to see that, in contrast to Banderas and his followers who are prisoners of that circle of time, Zacarías breaks out of it thanks to his desire to help others. But the egocentric de la Gándara entangles his family in the circle of the Zacarías family when he gives them his own ring to pawn.

The sinners' lack of moral vision is underscored by their physical myopia. Tirano Banderas wears greenish black goggles and Pereda, and those of the Diplomatic Corps, various kinds of glasses. The Minister of Spain places a monocle over «his eyes which are as indifferent as two glass globes».

Those who join the white forces, on the other hand, are endowed with a special vision. Filomeno Cuevas and Zacarías reach a point of view similar to that of Roque Cepeda when they decide to rise up against tyranny.

Parental love inspires them. The love that Zacarías feels for his son, eaten by pigs, gives him the power to turn his boy's remains into a necromantic amulet with which he governs his own fate. While Zacarías witnesses the scene of the farewell of the revolutionary Filomeno and his children, the enormous eye of his horse reflects the game of silhouettes in the circle of the lamp indicating the fact that the Indian and the revolutionary are in the same circle. Unfortunately, this passage is not included in Bush's otherwise excellent translation.



The motif of blindness and vision is completed by Blind Velones and his daughter Solita, who introduce a second song [Zamora Vicente: 86]. In contrast to the song of human weakness sung by the blind man under the cactus, the girl's three verses contain remnants of naive illusion. It is totally blind to reality since she and her father work in the bordello surrounded by all kinds of vices.

There are, then, three variants of blindness: that of naive illusion in a world of sin, the moral short sightedness of sinners and the clairvoyant blindness of the cactus guitarist, who understands how sin kills illusion by chaining man to his desires.

This brings us to a third song that complements the other two in the commentary on the destiny of man.

On the boat that takes the band of revolutionaries to Punta Serpiente, the name alluding to the snake Ouroborus; that is the headquarters of Banderas's regime, a black man sings Espronceda 's «Pirate Song». This exaltation of freedom is undermined by the fact that the song comes from the mouth of a black man, who in the history of the New World is not usually a free man, but a slave of fate and other men. Because of Cuevas' pride that his heroic vocation imposes on him, he and his family risk their lives at random, just as they deal cards while the black man sings.

The fate of man under the control of the stars is a game of chance. Gambling is the main attraction of the Fair. There roulette wheels point to the circular destiny that hypnotizes men, just as the spinning wheel of the merry-go-round hypnotizes cats [Bush: 186].

Living in the world of Banderas is likened to a game of chance. Gambling has a dominant place in the novel. In the novel, the Spanish Casino is juxtaposed with the Harris Circus, center, for one night of the revolutionary movement.

In my essay «Under the Big Top» I suggest how the Harris circus could have been inspired by the circus of British clown, Robert Brown, whose main tent was burned down by right wing students in Buenos Aires while Valle was there in 1910. [See my Andanzas to follow Valle's 1910 tour of South America].

Within the circus, Sánchez Ocaña exposes ideals very similar to those of Roque Cepeda. That is why the tent is seen as a large parasol full of light.

But Ocaña's words come from the mouth of a false apostle, who because of his histrionic rhetoric, is reduced to the appearance of an opera singer and the whole scene to that of a circus show. The circular shape of the tent canvas predicts in a microcosmic way what will happen to the ideals proclaimed there.

Banderas plays with his subjects like he plays his favorite game of "frog", in which a small pebble is thrown into the "mouth" of a metal or ceramic frog. The daily shooting of revolutionaries is heralded by the sound of the frog or “croak croak”. Veguillas becomes the Tyrant's toy by playing the frog with his shouting of “croak croak”; It is his way of avoiding his human obligations. In Santa Mónica, when the end arrives, Nachito switches over from the frog game to the game that he calls “like and dislike” where he wins without wanting to win by playing the numbers three and seven. By refusing to direct his own fate, he feels that the invisible forces of the stars have taken him over. At the same time as Nachito, Zacarías also gambles but, in contrast to Nachito, he accepts his moral responsibilities and wins the coins with which to buy the colt that he uses to take revenge on the pawnbroker.

In the last frog game, Lupita, the prostitute, portrays the central image of the novel: that is the circle: “Spectacular in rings and necklaces, she umpires the game sitting between the grind stone and the coffee pot beneath a parasol striped by circles of colored sand” (Bush,175) doña Lupita umpired the game from beneath a striped parasol, encircled by her brightly colored flounces. She represents the Indian, and, located among so many circles, she also represents Ouroboros: the circle of infinite time of men who do not want to assume their moral responsibility.

Now we witness the result of the rosary of events that Lupita the prostitute set in motion.

For this reason, Banderas calls her Cleopatra. because, like the Egyptian queen, she is the cause of so many catastrophes, including her own end, poisoned by an asp, a relative of Ouroboros. The fact that she sits under a parasol is reminiscent of Circus Harris now that its foretold metaphorical explosion is coming to pass.

At twelve o'clock, the last hour of Tirano Banderas arrives and the first hour of the next regime begins. The sound wheels of the clock remain vibrating because the circle of time is not broken [Zamora Vicente: 154]. Through the eyes of the other Lupita, the Romantic, we see the events announced in the prologue.

At this moment, Blind Velones and Solita reappear, throwing themselves into the street fleeing from the fire of the holocaust, which destroys the town. As was prophesied in Solita's song, they die on the stake of passion, that of violent revolution, in which the chaste illusion of moral revolution that Roque Cepeda prayed for finally perishes. Above, the bodies play "blind man's bluff" over the revolutionized Santa Fe de Tierra Firme [154].

The fact that we witness events through the eyes of Lupita, the clairvoyant, gives us a point of view similar to that of the author who has has reached the circle of the timeless.

From this perspective we see the pattern of blind play that governs the destiny of the world of Tirano Banderas. We can see the curve of the snake. After stabbing his demented daughter Manolita to death (fifteen stab wounds, one for each year of his insane regime), Tirano Banderas falls riddled with bullets. His head is exposed on a scaffold for three days and his quartered trunk is sent to four cities located in as many parts of the country [230]. Three and four days and places give the magic sum of seven, the number of men who refuse to accept responsibility for their actions.

BIBLIOGRAFÍA

BUSH, Peter [2012]: English translation of Tirano Banderas. New York Review of Books.

GARLITZ, Virginia Milner [2021]: «Más sobre Das: un posible modelo para el Doctor Polaco en Tirano Banderas», El Pasajero, Revista de Estudios sobre Ramón del Valle-Inclán, nº 32.

__________ [2010]:Andanzas de un aventurero español por las Indias: El viaje de Valle-Inclán por Sudamérica en 1910. Barcelona: PPU.

__________ [2007]: El centro del círculo: «La lámpara maravillosa” de Valle-Inclán. University of Santiago de Compostela.

__________ [1988]: «El Concepto de, karma en dos magos españoles» in Angel de Loureiro (coord). Estéticas, Laberintos, Nuevas Sendas.Ed Antropos, Barcelona.



__________ «Under The Bigtop: Una Posible Fuente Para El Circo Harris en Tirano Banderas», Anales de La Literatura Española Contemporánea,40(3), 867–895.

GUENON, René [2025]: Théosophisme: Histoire d'une pseudoréligion. Paris: Library Valois,

SCHNEIDER, Luis Mario [1995]: Todo México en Valle Inclán, UNAM.

VALLE-INCLÁN. Ramón del [1960]: La lámpara maravillosa: Ejercicios espirituales, Madrid.

__________ [1974] Tirano Banderas, 6a. ed. Madrid: Austral.

__________ [2020]: Tirano Banderas, ed Alonso Zamora Vicente. Madrid: Espasa Libros.

__________ [1971] Selected works. Madrid: Aguilar.